SACS Self Study
Executive Summary
Significant
Accomplishments
Since Colegio Maya’s Interim SACS visit in March of 2001,
we have been actively engaged in the school improvement process. Based on
the Interim Committee’s recommendations and our own assessment of what needs
to be done to continuously focus on school improvement, the following initiatives
highlight our progress
- We
did a school wide school climate survey which helped motivate our development
of our School Improvement Committee (see next bullet) and initiated a change
in our school food service provider.
- We
revised our Long Range Planning Committee and created a School Improvement
Committee with teacher, administrator, and Board/parent representatives.
This committee sponsored a school-wide weekend retreat in the fall of 2002
-
- We
have enriched our professional development program to better respond to
the needs of our diverse community of learners including training all elementary
and middle school teachers in the nationally endorsed productive thinking
program, Talents Unlimited. We currently have four of our faculty certified
as trainers in the program who continue to train our new staff and are training
the teachers in our school-wide community service project, Camino Seguro
(Safe Passage), on a voluntary basis. In addition, all of our teachers,
preK through twelfth grades, are taking a 50 hour course
in teaching second language learners in the regular classroom given by our
ESOL chairperson we sent to Belgium to receive training in this internationally
acclaimed approach from the University of Australia.
- We
created a full time curriculum position, that of Curriculum Facilitator, and under his guidance have enhanced our
system of curriculum renewal with school-wide committees in each curricular
area. We have also decided to actively engage in curriculum mapping and
to use Understanding by Design as the basic framework to guide our curriculum
work.
- We
will complete Phase I of our Performing and Fine Arts Center construction
project in March, 2005 that includes a 340 seat theater with a fully equipped
stage and the outside finish of a two-story classroom annex for art and
music classes.
- We
are actively participating in the Destination Imagination program at local
and national, and possibly international, levels with students from third
through eighth grades who choose this as one of their after school activities.
We are also offering Junior Great Books as enrichment for upper elementary
students in continued efforts to nourish our more gifted learners.
- We
have both a beginner’s and intermediate band and our fine arts program continues
to grow with the addition of a middle school drama class in our exploratory
program this year.
- We
have developed an Administrator and Parent Profile with input from the greater
community as well as revised our Graduate and Teacher Profiles.
- We
have a formal advisory program in place at both the middle and high school
levels with an “advisor friendly” manual developed by our school counselor
and principal to guide this program at the middle school level
- We
continue to develop our alumni data base which can be found on our website
and are in the process of developing a formal Colegio Maya Alumni
Association.
Significant
Challenges
The greatest challenge facing Colegio Maya is how to recruit
students and keep our numbers strong. Ideally we need between 350 and 380 fee
paying students to support the excellence we have established through our
beliefs, mission, vision and non-negotiables. At a board
retreat five years ago, the Board set the course for Maya to not get bigger,
but to get better. Since that time we have had the critical student numbers to
allow us to do just that. However, this year we have fewer fee paying/new
students than our budget expenditures are based on and since tuition is our
primary source of income, this is presenting both a challenge for this year as
well as adjustments in our planning for next year. We have already instituted
some savings measures in this year’s expenditures and hope to end the year
without having to use too much of our general fund reserves which meet our
policy requirements but are not excessive since we have added more to our
capital reserves to support our major construction project, our Performing and
Fine Arts Center.
To address this reality, which we hope is an anomaly for
this year rather than a trend, we have named an Ad Hoc Committee on our Board
and they are working to survey our current client base including Embassies,
particularly the US Embassy; multi-national companies; non-profit
organizations; local families, including Korean families here running clothing
factories, and other potential Guatemalan clients, to get a better sense of
what we can expect for student numbers in the future. Also the administration
is actively assessing ways to cut-back in expenditures for next year for if we
have the same number or fewer students than we do this year, we will need to
run the school with less personnel and to prioritize how to best resource our
initiatives. Austerity moves are never easy, particularly when they involve non-renewals
of some contracts and down-sizing. Handling this in a way that is transparent
and does not negatively affect staff morale or the reputation of the school in
the greater community is the biggest challenge facing the current
administration and Board.
However, given the dedication of the core community, the
resilient history of the school, the active commitment to school improvement
and the spirit that is evident in so many varied and unusual ways throughout
the school, it is clear that this immediate challenge will be met in ways that
ultimately enhance the school rather than hurt it. Colegio Maya will continue
to be an excellent accredited school whether it has 350, 300 or even 250
students.